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Monday, May 21, 2012

The new metagame and brainstorming

Lugia LEGEND - The BCIF(s)

Hello
everyone!

In today’s entry, I’ll just talk about random things
and this will also be the only entry of the week. The first reason for this is
that I’ll have my Nationals this weekend. The second reason for this is that I
just began my summer internship. And at the same time, I’ll need to read for my
entrance exams as well. So, yeah, I got lots to do.

I’ll playtesting heavily for Nationals this last week and I hope I can come up
with my 6th National Championship title after this weekend. I haven’t
decided my deck yet but I’m sure that whatever deck I’m choosing to Nationals,
I’ll comfortable with it. If you’re having Nationals in the next few weeks,
that’s something I recommend everyone doing – it doesn’t matter what you play –
as long as you’re comfortable with it.

First tournaments with the
new format

You’ve probably followed the results from the first
week of Battle Roads and Norway’s Nationalchampions. If we look at the BR
Results, we see nothing too surprising. Darkrai has been doing well in
different variations as expected but at the same time CMT and Eels are still
going strong. There is just one top tier deck more but nothing too dominating. Pure
fighting decks have also had some decent success in metagames, where CMTs haven’t
been that popular.

Norway’s Nationals is a big and remarkable tournament unlike Battle Roads. So
the results of that tournament should matter. However, I think the finalist
decks of the Masters took everyone by surprise. The final in Masters was a
mirror between Darkrai EX/Terrakion EX/Mewtwo EX deck. A deck that has a good
match-ups against anything else but CMT. CMT is a top tier deck, so why didn’t
CMT do good in Norway’s Nationals? The reason for this is pretty simple – it was
almost non-existent in their metagame.

The new sets along with big tournaments makes people usually very creative. As
much as I love creativity and rogue decks, I’m not a huge fan of those in
National Championships. If you’re a competitive player, you should be playing
the BEST deck in the format, not the funny new deck that just can’t be higher
than tier2. I think this is exactly what happened in Norway (and what I expect
happen in Finland as well). People get creative and want to try new things
thanks to new set but the fact is, now isn’t the time for that! There were
decks like Electrode/Terrakion and Empoleon/Terrakion on top cuts of Norway. As
we all should know, CMT has an almost autowin match-up against decks like that.
CMT pretty much autowins anything with Terrakion as a main attacker. However,
people were (and are) afraid of Darkrai EX, so Terrakion is very popular. In my
opinion the funniest part is that even though the metagame was orientated against
Darkrai EX, a Darkrai EX deck WITHOUT a decent Fighting counter won the
tournament. Was it because Darkrai EX is the BCIF, the players got lucky or
just because the deck was new? We’ll never know but one thing is for sure – one
tournament (even though it’s big) tells a 1% of the truth in the format.
Another good example for this would be Canadian Nationals last year.

There has also been some crazy rogues around BRs. However, these decks usually
have something that connects them. Most rogue deck take an advantage of the
metagame’s biggest weakness – Fighting. There has been as crazy decks as Lugia
LEGEND/Terrakion doing well. Also, anything with Groudon EX goes as well, it’s
fighting and fighting weaknesses are very usual.

Here’s the tournament winning Lugia LEGEND decklist, if you haven’t seen it
yet. You can also check the tournament report here.

I’m pretty speechless about this deck anddoubt it’s consistency but hey – it won a tournament so I’m no one to
criticize the deck.

Conclusion

I know, I know – this entry was way shorter than usual
but yeah, I’m busy. I hope you enjoyed it and that my brainstorming about the
metagame could help everyone out a bit. As said, this will be my first and only
entry of the week. I hope everyone will have a great week and good luck in your
tournaments next weekend!

The next update will be my Nationals’ report.

Wish me luck for my Nationals so I can provide you a Nationals’ winning
decklist and bring home a 6th National Championship title!

11 comments:

Wait wuut? Darkrai loses to CMT?? Oh, nohohooho.. No. Super Scoop Up/Max Potion/Shaymin shenanigans practically makes this matchup unwinnable for CMT. factor in that Darkrai picks off a an un-eviolited Celebi every second turn and you have yourself a one-sided matchup.

People did play CMT at the norwegian nats, it just lost to both Eels and Darkrai...

I played 2 CMTs Saturday, one of which got second at States and Top 4 at another, with Quad Terrakion and beat both. Lost Remover and Ruins of Alph make everything without an Eviolite a 2 hit KO and kills their energy acceleration.

Hi, it's awesome to see you featuring my list! I hope folks like it, or at least find it entertaining. While it isn't the most consistent deck, and I doubt it's the most consistent list that could be built, it's better than I expected it to ever get when I first started playing with it. :) Good luck at Nationals!